Steve Jobs, the chairman and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, would be open to a sale of the company at the right price, according to a published report.

The New York Times reports Jobs, who owns about 50 percent of Pixar, would want a strong premium to its current $5.9 billion market capitalization to consider a sale, but he would be open to an offer from its long-time partner, Walt Disney Co. The paper attributed Jobs’ willingness to consider a sale to “two people with knowledge of the talks” now taking place between Disney and Pixar about possibly extending their partnership.

But the paper reports that in talks about a new version of their partnership, Disney CEO Robert Iger has yet to make an offer to acquire Pixar. The paper reports that Disney is hoping that its new animated feature, “Chicken Little,” due in theaters this weekend, will give it greater leverage in talks with Pixar.

In a bid to stop the board of education in Kansas from making a horrible mistake by adopting and teaching intelligent design creationism in its schools, two leading scientific organizations have denied Kansas permission to use their copyrighted material in their new standards proposal.

The National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association said the much-disputed new standards “will put the students of Kansas at a competitive disadvantage as they take their place in the world.”

The stinging rebuke came less than two weeks before the state school board is expected to put the science standards into effect. The new standards have also received a lukewarm review from an external education company.

While the copyright denial could cause delay in their adoption, as the standards are rewritten, it is unlikely to derail the board’s conservative majority in its mission to require that challenges to Darwin’s theories be taught in the state’s classrooms.

“Kansas students will not be well-prepared for the rigors of higher education or the demands of an increasingly complex and technologically-driven world if their science education is based on these standards,” Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy, and Michael J. Padilla, president of the teachers’ group, said in a joint written statement today. “Instead, they will put the students of Kansas at a competitive disadvantage as they take their place in the world.”

Pssst, we’re being robbed. Exxon yesterday posted a record quarterly earning. Their $9.92 billion dollar net profit for the 3rd quarter gave Exxon the largest quarterly earning ever in US corporate history.

Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, said yesterday that its third-quarter net income jumped 75 percent, to $9.92 billion. Its profit in the first nine months of this year - $25.42 billion - already equals its full-year earnings for 2004. This year’s sales, which topped $100 billion in the last quarter, are expected to exceed those of Wal-Mart.

Another oil giant, Royal Dutch Shell, reported a 68 percent jump in profits yesterday, to $9.03 billion. Chevron is expected to post a profit of more than $4 billion today.

This year is shaping up as an exceptionally lucrative one for the oil industry, thanks to strong global demand, tight supplies and high prices for oil and natural gas. While the idea that the Bush administration was considering imposing a windfall profits tax was knocked down yesterday by officials, longstanding resentments against Big Oil are resurfacing and could end up imposing some additional burdens on the industry.

Exxon’s chief executive remarked in a news conference held after the earnings report, “I am not embarrassed, this is no windfall.” Do we need to redirect your attention to the report that concluded oil prices would have to rise to over $95 a barrel in order for gas prices in the US to top $3 a gallon? In the past quarter oil has hovered around $60-$65 a barrel, only briefly breaking $70 after the hurricanes that ravaged the Gulf. So why the high prices?!

Chief Justice John Roberts has denied a stay by the Supreme Court in the R.I.M. vs NTP BlackBerry case.

The company, Research In Motion, is appealing a patent infringement verdict to the high court and sought to freeze lower court proceedings while the appeal was pending. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. denied the company’s request for a stay, without comment.

Lawyers for Research in Motion argued that its business would be harmed irreparably if the court did not delay the return of the case to the lower court where the company was found guilty in 2003 of violating patents held by NTP Inc.

The loss on Wednesday, which had been expected, does not say anything about the more significant issue of whether the Supreme Court will hear Research in Motion’s appeal.

Should the lower courts enforce their earlier ruling, all sales and operations of R.I.M.’s BlackBerry technology would be halted in the US, effective immediately. It’s a bit confusing that this case is still able to push forward even after the US Patent Office invalidated all of NTP’s patents. What a waste of tax payers’ dollars.

An obviously manipulated image of Condoleeza Rice published online by USA Today was pulled after a flury of websites reported on her new look — pure evil. The USA Today editor’s responded with:

Editor’s note: The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA TODAY’s editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance. In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor brightened a portion of Rice’s face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards.